A degree of vulnerability is central to stand-up, and integral to the expectation of candid revelation. It’s a vexing concept from a feminist perspective, however, because of its association ‘both with femininity and with weakness and dependency’ (Gilson). In stand-up, vulnerability is perhaps most apparent in self-deprecation or self-satire, an aspect of comic practice that remains more common among female comedians, as they seek to accommodate the perceptions of others; a means to ‘recognise (and neutralise) audience resistance’ (Russell) and build rapport. Self-deprecation isn’t only vulnerability, however, and it can be used strategically, as when a comedian uses her own body ‘as a vehicle to acknowledge and highlight a discrepancy between what most women look like and the media’s idealised version of womanhood’ (Tomsett, 2018, 9). And in turn, vulnerability isn’t only self-deprecation – as shown by the many comedians who play with the expectation of self-exposure.
Lucy McCormick has been weaponising vulnerability for years, and her most recent show, Lucy and Friends (2023-), which reprises her narcissistic ‘Lucy’ persona, is no different. At the outset of the show McCormick gives audience members roles to play: one being ‘Mother’. After much varied mayhem – nudity, pissing into a plastic bottle, demolishing bits of the set with an angle grinder, she addresses ‘Mother’: ‘you’re disappointed in me’, she says, earnestly, ‘but this is what I do’. Her ‘mother’s’ disappointment – and McCormick’s supposed vulnerability in revealing it – provides a further frame for incongruity and a further platform for her narcissism, with the plea ‘this is what I do’ suggesting that the mayhem is actually a vocation (thus implying an absurd profundity in the carnage). Later, McCormick sobs about her lack of friends – confiding that her boyfriend and best friend ended up together, and soon after, still distraught, she climbs the lighting rig (barely clothed, teetering heels). High up, seemingly stuck, she whimpers, ‘can someone help?’ An audience member gallantly steps in to assist her down: ‘I meant the microphone’ she snaps, impatiently gesturing to the mic on the floor. Naturally enough, the audience has read her position as vulnerable, her potential peril exacerbated visually by the high heels and scanty clothes, but it’s the lack of the mic as the means for yet more grandstanding that’s actually causing her frustration. Here, narcissism trumps vulnerability, indeed, narcissism is the armour that makes ‘Lucy’ entirely invulnerable.
Courtney Pauroso’s Vanessa5000 (2023-) also uses vulnerability strategically. Pauroso, in tiny PVC underwear and fishnets, plays a deluxe sex robot, and the premise of the show is a product demonstration of her functionality as a one-stop pleasure centre (three holes – all dishwasher safe). In occasional asides, we seem to see beyond Vanessa 5000’s strictly erotic capabilities, with glimpses of a more tender, human side. ‘Do you ever get sad?’ she asks, wistfully, then, a beat later, ‘try Feel Better™’. It’s a joke that mocks both the commodification of emotion and the impulse to anthropomorphise technology (as a robot, she just doesn’t care). But the suggestions of Vanessa’s melancholy accumulate, a trail through all the artifice that leads us to what seems like some kind of truth about Pauroso the performer. To the wracking emotion of Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, she reveals all: ‘I’m 38, I’m deep in consumer debt, and I want a baby’ she confesses. Vulnerable, exhausted, she asks for help from the male audience volunteer who has gamely assisted throughout, and the two go off stage, only for Pauroso to return alone, her face twisted in malevolence, blood dripping from her mouth. Set against the expectation for feminine vulnerability, this invulnerability is both sinister and very funny.
In One Woman Show (2022-2023), Liz Kingsman approaches the issue of vulnerability on a meta level: rather than exploiting it herself, she diagnoses the dubious use of vulnerability by other female storytellers. The show ‘sends up both a specific subgenre and its stars — boldly confessional, sexually frank, endearingly messy young women’ (Vincentelli), a subgenre best embodied by Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s hugely influential Fleabag. The unfulfilling sex and the mess are obviously key markers of vulnerability, the same kind of feminine messiness Pauroso plays with, and Kingsman is merciless in mocking the use of vulnerability as a bid for sympathy or appeal. What’s particularly problematic about Fleabag and other shows which use the troubled woman trope (Girls (2012-2017) and This Way Up (2019-) for example) is the fact that vulnerability is framed as a form of empowerment, a way of subverting ‘the perfect aspirational model of femininity’ (Minor and Perkins). It’s this sense of subversion that Kingsman satirises through her character, stumbling performatively as she does through her 20s ‘in a fiercely honest, darkly comic way’, and proudly committed to telling ‘women’s story’ (just the one). Jason Zinoman describes Kingsman’s character as ‘a mockery of the nakedly ingratiating artist who disguises herself as a boldly feminist risk-taker’, while Brian Logan similarly notices how the show ‘critiques the feminist credentials of a genre dependent on cute female ineptitude.’ Feminism serves as added garnish or frisson- the bravery of subverting perfection! – all while maintaining entirely conventional forms of feminine appeal (young, sexy, cute).
Both McCormick and Pauroso exploit the expectation of vulnerability to ultimately achieve invulnerability, while Kingsman’s satire is more diagnostic, but all three shows are equally brilliant in their exploration of this most vexing of concepts.
Works cited:
Gilson, Erinne Cunniff (2016), ‘Vulnerability and Victimization: Rethinking Key Concepts in Feminist Discourses on Sexual Violence’, Signs, 42.1
Minor, Laura and Perkins, Claire (2024). Call for Papers: ‘Beyond the messy millennial woman: televising perfection, imperfection and resilience’ [Call for Papers].
Logan, Brian (2021), ‘Liz Kingsman: One-Woman Show review – wicked, whip-smart skewering of Fleabag and co’, The Guardian, 14 Oct, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/oct/14/liz-kingsman-one-woman-show-review-wicked-whip-smart-skewering-of-fleabag-and-co
Russell, Danielle (2002), ‘Self-deprecatory Humour and the Female Comic: Self-destruction or Comedic Construction?’ Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture, 2.1.
Tomsett, Ellie (2018) ‘Positives and negatives: reclaiming the female
body and self-deprecation in stand-up comedy’, Comedy Studies, 9:1, 6-18,
Vincentelli, Elisabeth (2023) ‘Liz Kingsman Is Doing a One-Woman Show (Without Kit Harington)’, New York Times, 31 July, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/theater/liz-kingsman-one-woman-show.html
Zinoman, Jason (2023) ‘One Woman Show’ Review: Unlikable for Laughs’, New York Times, 23 June, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/theater/one-woman-show-review-liz-kingsman.html
Humour in the Arts 